Anthony Mackie Leads Desert Warrior to $596,000 U.S. Opening

Desert warrior opened weakly in theaters last weekend as Anthony Mackie’s Saudi epic reached the U.S. and the Middle East. The film had taken in $596,000 in the U.S. on 1,010 screens by Thursday, while Saudi Arabia posted $87,000 from 6,100 admissions over opening weekend.

Those numbers sit against a reported $150M budget. Mackie stars alongside Ben Kingsley, and the film was set up at Riyadh media giant MBC Group before Vertical acquired it.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE

In Saudi Arabia, Desert Warrior was the eighth-biggest title over its opening weekend. By Thursday, its ticket sales there had reached $110,000, with another $37,000 in the UAE and $225,000 across the Middle East.

The box-office gap is sharper because the film spent five years in a troubled trek to the screen. Creative differences with director Rupert Wyatt delayed the project, Wyatt left and later returned, and the budget grew with the delays and a pick-up shoot in Saudi.

Rupert Wyatt and the budget

That history left Desert Warrior opening into a difficult commercial position. The film’s early totals in the U.S. and across the Middle East have not matched its reported cost, and the opening weekend in Saudi Arabia showed only 6,100 admissions.

For now, the film’s box-office run points to a small theatrical start rather than a broad one. Vertical is focusing on premium video on demand for the film, which makes the opening-week totals the clearest measure of how much ground it needs to cover from here.